


In Five Million Years (You and I Will Be Echoes in Space)

by roaroftheninth



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Major Character Injury, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 15:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roaroftheninth/pseuds/roaroftheninth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry's always been able to see the future before it happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Five Million Years (You and I Will Be Echoes in Space)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is at least partly inspired by FayeStardust, who was pretty sure Harry should be able to read the future. I've been writing so much tomfoolery lately that I decided to try something different. Also, I'm really not kidding about the major character death. I guess I apologize in advance?

Harry’s been able to see the future since he was very young.

 

At first, they were just dreams. He remembers being five and being excited for his birthday, because Harry’s favourite cousin Dylan was already  _six_  and sixwas the very best age to be. Anything could happen when you were six.

 

He’d been hanging off the bottom post on the banister, asking his mum how many more minutes until his friends were due to arrive for cake and party games, and he’d suddenly had a dream.

 

Harry hadn’t known you could dream when you were awake.

 

He had seen flashes of green, like running across the grass, and then someone saying,  _they should put that dog down, third bloody kid in the neighbourhood_  and Dylan crying.

 

And then Harry’s mum had asked him why on earth he was being a silly and lying on the floor, and Harry hadn’t realized until that moment that he even  _was_  lying on the floor. He’d written it off as one of those things that happens sometimes – maybe every now and again, you just lie on the floor without remembering and have dreams.

 

When the dream ended up coming true, Harry had been confused, but he’d been so full of cake that looking at the way Dylan’s arm was bleeding had made him dizzy and he had thrown up all over himself. His mum had carried him upstairs to bed, and he had forgotten for a while that any of this had ever happened.

 

The next time it came upon him, he was nearly seven. He had apparently lain down to dream at school, because when he had come back from it, his teacher and classmates had been crowded over him and he had had to wait in the office, legs kicking off the edge of a too-big chair, for his mum to come and get him.

 

That was when she had realized that something was amiss.

 

Harry still thinks about that afternoon sometimes, when his mother had sat him down at the kitchen table and made him hot chocolate and explained that sometimes, very special people could see things before they happened. He hadn’t understood exactly what that meant, at the time; all he knew was that sometimes, he laid down without meaning to and had bright dreams and that sometimes he got to see them again because they came true.

 

His mother had said things like,  _Sometimes you might see things that are not very nice at all, but don’t be frightened_ and  _Gran could see the future, too, when she was still here_  and  _You can’t ever tell anyone about the things that you see, Hazza._

 

Harry doesn’t ever tell anyone, even as he gets older and the visions happen more often. He gets better at identifying that prickling feeling on the back of his neck that tells him one is coming, and he almost never passes out in the open, tucking himself away into bathroom stalls and side streets when he feels one coming on. They get more painful as he gets older, too, becoming less like dreams and more like attacks on his consciousness, and they make Harry grit his teeth and wish they would  _fuck off_  because so often they are about things that don’t even matter. He sees his mum taking clothing out of the laundry, or a minor car accident involving people he doesn’t know (later, he recognizes them as his mum’s community council friends, when he sees it play out again in real-time on his way home from school), or his next door neighbour walking her dog in the park. He doesn’t understand how his grandmother saw this as a gift, when it’s really more of a nuisance.

 

Harry thinks he would get more use of it if it forecasted events in his own life, but it never seems to. He always sees events that concern people he knows, and very occasionally, famous people whose lives he sort of follows (he sends flowers to Amy Winehouse that turn up on her doorstep the day before It Happens, and he knows there wasn’t time for her to work out why Harry Styles of the fledgling X-Factor band One Direction wanted her to have something lovely).

 

That’s the other thing that irritates him; any future he sees is fixed. He tried to change it, once, when he foresaw his sister Gemma getting her heart broken, and it had made everything so much worse. His mother had explained to him, gently, that while time is always in flux, Harry can only see definite, fixed points. Trying to alter them forces the universe to ‘fight back’, as it were, attempting to force things back into their original timeline. Harry listens to her, patiently, but he hates that it’s true. What’s the point of seeing the future if you can’t do anything about it?

 

He guesses it could be worse. The cosmic joke that’s been played on Gemma is that she can see the dead – but, like Harry, she can’t right any wrongs.

 

Harry's been living and breathing the four boys who have rather suddenly become his family for nearly two years before he tells them about what he can do. They’re the first people to know, aside from his mum, and it makes Harry’s heart ache when, after an initial moment of incredulousness, they believe him. Louis laughs and asks him if he knows who’s going to win the World Cup because they could put some serious money on it. Zayn immediately launches into a series of fascinated questions about how it works, and Liam just squeezes his shoulder and tells him that he doesn’t have to hide his visions from them anymore. Oddly, the most comforting reaction is Niall’s, who simply shakes his head, pats Harry’s knee, and says that he wouldn’t want to know the future either.

 

They make Harry feel understood, and while he’s never exactly had a hard time fitting in or making friends, it’s nice that there are people who  _know_  about his affliction, or blessing, or whatever you want to call it. They’ve got his back – literally, sometimes, like the way Zayn catches a fistful of the back of Harry’s t-shirt when he has a vision on stage and nearly falls. Zayn promptly gets into a bit of silly banter with Louis about how the crowd’s obviously been a bit boring if Harry’s having a nap, prompting fifty thousand girls to scream all at once on Louis’ count. They all play it off, and life goes on. Harry’s grateful that they know him better than anyone else ever has and that they love him despite the insanity that is all of their lives.

 

He has a lot of visions about them, most of them mundane, but some of them matter enough that Harry has a hard time keeping them from the person involved. Eventually, he stops trying, and when he shows up at Liam’s flat less than an hour after the break-up with Danielle, Liam doesn’t even ask how he knew, doesn’t blame him for not giving him a warning days ago, just mutely lets him in. They get drunk together and Liam cries and asks if things are going to get better.

 

Harry doesn’t bother reminding him that the way he reads the future doesn’t work that way, that he can’t just see what he wants, and simply says that things  _will_. He says it with such conviction that Liam seems to believe him, and a few weeks later Harry stumbles in on him with his hands under the hem of Zayn’s shirt and smirks:  _See, didn’t I tell you?_

 

It’s toward the end of the world tour for their third album when they’re all shacked up in Toronto together, collapsed across two beds and a couch and tangled up in various incarnations. Niall is snoring, face-down on one of the beds, while Zayn uses him as a pillow and scrolls through his phone. Harry is curled up on Liam’s lap, while the latter dozes with his mouth wide open. Louis is nearly upside-down on the couch, every now and again lazily attempting to toss popcorn into Liam’s mouth.

 

The TV is on, dully, in the background, although the only one paying attention to what’s on is Harry. No one has said anything in a long time, but this is year number four of being dragged around the planet together in close quarters, and sometimes they need a break from each other.

 

It happens. Harry doesn’t think it means they love each other any less.

 

Because of the lazy, companionable way they’re all doing it, it doesn’t seem odd to anyone that Harry falls asleep as quick as a light going out. It doesn’t mean  _vision_  to them the way it does when it happens in an odd place, at an odd time.

 

Harry’s grateful for that afterward, he honestly is, because usually they press around him, asking if he’s all right, and Louis will occasionally needle him to try and find out what the vision was about.

 

Harry already knows, the second he wakes up, that he wouldn’t be able to look Louis in the eye and keep the secret right now. Tugging his sleeves over his hands to hide how they’re shaking, he climbs to his feet and lets himself quietly out of the room, ignoring the startled sound Liam makes at the sudden lack of weight on his lap and the way Louis’ eyes follow him questioningly.

 

Harry is sitting on the ground next to the door, back against the wall and knees folded and pressed up against his chest, when Louis follows him out.

 

“All right?” Louis asks cautiously.

 

“Zayn,” Harry says at once. “I need Zayn. Please?”

 

He doesn’t look up, but he can feel the puzzled, slightly hurt look Louis gives him. “Okay.”

 

Louis taps on the door to the room; someone opens it at once, like they’ve been waiting, and Louis murmurs something that Harry doesn’t quite catch. A moment later, the door is closing again and Zayn’s on this side of it, with Harry. The hallway is otherwise deserted.

 

“Is it a vision?” Zayn asks.

 

Harry gives a tiny, tired nod of his head, like it hurts to hold up the entire weight of his skull right now.

 

“We thought it might be,” Zayn says. “You’re only ever odd after you’ve had one.”

 

“I’m frequently odd,” Harry protests weakly, and it might be funny if he’d had the energy to inject the proper feigned indignation into it.

 

“Yeah, you are,” Zayn replies, with a small smile that says he knows where Harry was going with that. “But anti-social odd, I mean. Even when you’re upset, you usually want to be upset in everyone’s faces.”

 

Harry drops his head onto his knees. “Yeah.”

 

“So,” Zayn says, after a long moment has passed. “Was your vision about Lou?”

 

Harry’s shoulders twitch. “How did you – ?”

 

“You sent him away,” Zayn points out. “And you asked for me, for  _some_  reason. I’m the worst listener. The only one who thinks I’m any good is Liam, bless him, and that’s because he has a hard time telling my listening face from my in-my-head-I’m-building-robots face.”

 

Harry’s shoulders slump. “You’re not the worst. None of you are the worst. You’re my family.”

 

“Yeah.” Zayn sounds fond as he curls an arm around Harry’s shoulders and tucks him into his side. “We are. But I really am the worst, and if you don’t quit being so nice to me, I’ll start to think you’ve had a vision of me falling out of a twenty-seventh floor window or something.”

 

Harry stills.

 

“Oh.” Zayn goes still, too, a beat later. “ _Oh._  You – don’t tell me, Harry, Christ. I don’t want to know. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to – ”

 

“No,” Harry interrupts. “Not you, no windows, I just – Lou.”

 

Zayn relaxes, just marginally. “What about Lou?”

 

Harry turns his head so that he can bury his face in Zayn’s jumper. Often hugs with Zayn involve the smell of leather and tobacco, but this sweater is clean and only smells faintly of lavender.

 

“There’s going to be an accident,” Harry says, his voice muffled and quiet. “A really, really bad accident.”

 

“Shit.” Zayn settles his hand over the back of Harry’s neck. “What kind of accident?”

 

“Car,” Harry replies. “A car accident. Just Lou, driving on the motorway, and someone comes across the centre line.”

 

Zayn swears again, more softly this time. “We can’t even tell him to be careful, since it won’t be his fault.”

 

“We can’t tell him anything,” Harry says, and he looks up and meets Zayn’s eyes squarely. “Promise you won’t.”

 

Zayn remembers everything Harry’s told him, about fixed points and how trying to change it makes it worse, but it doesn’t stop him from swearing again.

 

“Does he die?” Zayn asks, after a beat, and they both wince at the straight-forwardness of the question, no matter how gently Zayn tries to ask it.

 

“I don’t know,” Harry says hesitantly. He shakes his head slightly, head rubbing against Zayn’s jumper. “It was really bad, his car was a total wreck, it…”

 

He doesn’t have to finish.

 

“What if we – what if we stop him from driving again?” Zayn says hopefully. “Get his license revoked, somehow – ”

 

“He’s not going to  _never drive again_ , license or not,” Harry says dully. “And if we told him all about it and he decided that giving up driving was worth the risk, there’d be an accident anyway. Only, this time, it’d be worse, because he’d be in the car with someone else driving and they’d get hurt, too.”

 

“Are you sure?” Zayn asks quietly.

 

Harry’s so sure that it makes his heart ache. “Yeah. It’s like I said. The universe does whatever it takes to – to fix the timeline.”

 

Zayn is silent for so long that Harry legitimately looks up to see if he’s gone away inside his head, the way he does sometimes.

 

“Is it soon?” Zayn asks, as soon as Harry moves, like he’s been building up to asking the question. “Does it happen soon?”

 

“I – yeah. I think.” Harry pulls away from Zayn a little, because his eyes are starting to get red-rimmed and he wants to wipe at them with the sleeves of his sweater before he really gives into it and Louis comes out to make him feel better whether he likes it or not. “He looked – like he does now. Not older.”

 

They don’t say much after that, and it’s only when Harry is rising, wiping at the moisture under his eyes, that Zayn says, abruptly, “Why did you ask for me?”

 

Harry looks down at him. “What?”

 

“Why not Niall? Or Liam?”

 

Harry wipes his arm under his nose, looking so young for a moment that Zayn wants to give him a hug. “Because. The accident happens between Doncaster and Bradford. He’ll be on his way to visit  _you_.”

 

\--

 

The tour draws to an end, and Harry and Zayn watch either warily during the quiet moments, those brief lulls in the insanity when they’re backstage before a show or they’ve got a night off from traveling. Niall seems to pick up on their oddness, but he just gives them a peculiar look every now and again and doesn’t really say anything. If they touch Louis more, clinging to him or tousling his hair or leaving big, sloppy kisses on his neck, no one calls them out on it.

 

It’s the last day of the tour before they get to go home and they’re discussing their respective plans – “I’m going to sleep for so long that someone will have to come and stick their tongue in my mouth to wake me up,” Louis announces, and when Liam says, “Is that medically sound?”, Louis grins and replies, “In my version of Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming would also have his hand in my trousers, but I was trying to keep it PG for you, Li” – when Zayn says, abruptly: “I’m not going to visit my family, I don’t think. Don’t have the energy. I’m just going to hole up in London and sleep.”

 

There’s a round of exclamations at that, except for Harry, who narrows his eyes slightly. He knows exactly what Zayn is doing, although it’s hard to fault him for it. Harry would do it too, if he didn’t have that feeling of  _knowing_ , deep down in his bones, that some things can’t be rewritten.

 

“Are you sure?” Niall asks.

 

“You should at least see them for a bit, they’re always texting me and asking what you get up to when you don’t call home for awhile,” Liam says.

 

“Yeah, no, I’m good,” Zayn says, looking uncomfortable but firm. “Just London for me. I’ll see them at Christmas.”

 

“Was there a fight or something?” Liam asks.

 

“Everything all good on the home front?” Louis adds.

 

“Fine,” Zayn replies, and he manages not to snap at them but his tone also makes it clear that the conversation is closed. “I’m just tired, is all.”

 

 They all sort of nod and shrug, except Harry, who doesn’t have the heart to do anything other than nudge him gently as they all go their separate ways to start packing.

 

\--

 

Harry doesn’t find out right away if Zayn quietly goes to visit his family over the break or not, because as is typical, Zayn drops off the face of the earth for two weeks and responds to texts with brief, monosyllabic answers, when he answers at all.

 

They’re all used to this at this point, which is why Harry is surprised to get a text from Liam nearly three weeks in.

 

 _zayns being weird help me outtttt, i no u no y_

 

Harry frowns from where he’s flopped on his back in the garden, having graduated from spending all day flopped on his back in his bed or on the couch.

 

 _He texts you when we’re all on break?_

 

There’s a pause before the next one.

 

 _allways has._

 

Harry isn’t sure whether to be offended that Zayn ignores everyone but Liam or to roll his eyes at how clearly ridiculous they are, and have been since day one. Harry and Louis are the annoying repeat texters, and if anything Zayn should be answering them just to shut them up, but of course it’s Liam with his terrible spelling that Zayn bothers to navigate a phone for. Harry wonders why he’s even surprised at this point.

 

 _How is he being weird?_  Harry asks, like he doesn’t know.

 

Liam isn’t fooled, either.

_answer teh questionnnn_

 

Harry sighs and tosses his phone away into the grass. It buzzes twice more in the ensuing ten minutes, but Harry ignores it until his ring-tone actually goes off.

 

Groaning, he rolls over and snags it. “What makes you think I know why he’s being weird?”

 

On the other end, Liam sounds like he’s got his arms folded. Harry would probably be on the receiving end of a stern glare right now, were they in the same room. “Because Niall and I saw how weird you two were being toward the end of the tour, and then Zayn said he wasn’t going home to visit his family which was odd in itself.”

 

“Maybe he’s actually tired,” Harry points out, with a lightness he doesn’t feel.

 

Liam ignores him. “Yesterday his sister tweeted that he was home. When I messaged him about it, he got a bit panicky and then the tweet disappeared.”

 

“He’s probably afraid of the paps, like all of us,” Harry says.

 

“If you try to spoonfeed me one more ounce of bullshit, I will come down to Cheshire and sort you out,” Liam threatens.

 

“ _Liam_ ,” Harry says, impressed despite himself. “That was a proper  _threat_.”

 

“I’ll follow through,” Liam warns. He totally won’t, but Harry thinks it’s endearing enough that he lets Liam goad him into an answer. Besides that, it’s been over a month since the vision, and it’s starting to fade in his mind now, less vivid and less horrifying than the day he saw it. He can talk about it without shaking, now, although that awful, resigned, pre-grief feeling in the pit of his stomach never quite goes away.

 

“Fine. It’s not a big deal.” Harry aims for nonchalant and is pretty sure he nails it. “I had a vision, is all. Zayn thinks that if no one knows he’s in Bradford, it won’t come true.”

 

“All right,” Liam says hesitantly, like he knows there ought to be more to that story. “But I thought you said there were fixed points. Like, the stuff that you see can’t be changed.”

 

“Yeah.” Harry sighs. “Zayn wants to try, though. I’m – sort of letting him, because I guess I want – you know, this time to be the exception, when things  _can_  be changed.”

 

Ah. Harry didn’t realize that until he said it aloud.

 

“Is it a vision about Zayn?” Liam asks quietly. He sounds like he doesn’t want to know, but some compulsion drives him to ask.

 

“No,” Harry says, and he can almost  _feel_  the way Liam relaxes on the other end of the line.

 

“Me, then? Or Niall, or Lou?”

 

Harry hesitates. “It’s Lou. You can’t – you can’t tell him, though.”

 

“No, well, I wouldn’t,” Liam says. “I wouldn’t want to know I was going to get hurt before it happened. He  _is_  going to get hurt, yeah? That’s what the vision was about?”

 

“Yeah, I – it’s not going to be good,” is all Harry can manage.

 

Liam is quiet.

 

“I’m going to let you go,” Harry says after a moment. “Got errands to run for my mum.”

 

Liam seems glad that Harry took the initiative. “Yeah, the second you’re back for a visit, they put you to work like you never left, don’t they?”

 

After they say their farewells, Harry stays outside on the grass for a long time, wondering if Louis saw the tweet about Zayn being in Bradford, and whether predestination is real or if sometimes, the universe cuts you a break.

 

\--

 

Louis shows up to record for the new album at the end of the month, and he doesn’t look any the worse for wear. Harry lets himself relax, a little, because they won’t have to worry again for awhile, he’s fairly certain; Zayn doesn’t go home to visit his family that often, or at least, never for long enough spans that Louis would feel compelled to visit him. For awhile, they get back into the regular rhythm of things, and Harry lets the weight of it melt off his shoulders a little.

 

On a Thursday, Niall and Louis finish recording nearly two hours before the other three are due to be done.

 

“Want us to wait around, grab some supper afterward?” Niall asks.

 

Harry, Liam, and Zayn respond in a chorus of negatives.

 

“We’re due back early tomorrow, might as well go home and pretend you’ll go to bed early,” Liam says, because he knows them at this point.

 

“Try not to have too much fun without me,” Louis replies, with a careless wave.

 

Harry thinks about that after, that crystal-clear moment when Louis is turning his back on all of them and Harry feels nothing; not a single tremor of premonition, no feeling of dread.

 

They’re still in the studio, Zayn going over and over a run he’s not happy with, when Paul shuts everything down. One minute, they’re singing and fooling around; the next, Harry finds himself crammed into the back seat of a car with Zayn and Liam.

 

“What’s going on?” Liam demands.

 

“There’s been an accident,” Paul says shortly, and Harry feels a horrible, juddery  _pain_  rip through him that dies, burning, in his throat before he can verbalize it.

 

Liam continues asking questions, but Paul is on the phone, largely ignoring them, and there’s an unbearable tension in the car that makes Zayn eventually drag Liam into a bone-crushing hug. Liam crumples into it and shuts up at once. Zayn reaches for Harry with his free hand and tugs him in, too, until they’re a huddle in the middle seat.

 

“You had better be wearing seatbelts back there,” Paul says at one point, and the tone of his voice is so  _terrifying_  that they all wordlessly comply. Zayn holds onto them both anyway, no matter how uncomfortable it is now that they’re strapped in separately.

 

When they reach Paul’s house, they’re herded upstairs into the back bedroom that overlooks the garden. Paul crosses the room to close the shades.

 

“Tell us  _something_ ,” Zayn says, desperately, before Paul can leave.

 

Paul looks at their faces and something seems to break, a little, because he drags his hand over his face and gestures toward the bed, indicating that they should all sit. The huddle happens again, but this time it’s Harry in the middle, because Liam and Zayn just  _know_.

 

“Louis and Niall were in a car accident,” Paul says, blurting it out all at once.

 

“Louis…” Harry murmurs, because he knew that part, but  _Niall?_

 

“I’m sorry, Harry, I really am.” Paul sounds like he was doing okay until this moment arrived, when he had to meet their eyes and tell them that they were no longer the five-boy family unit that’s held together, against the odds, for so long.

 

“What – are they – ?” Liam can’t seem to formulate the words he needs to ask whether they’re okay, but Paul understands anyway.

 

When he shakes his head, Harry hears his own breath stutter and knows he’ll never be okay again, no matter how much time passes, no matter what happens. Something broke and it’s irreparable. He wonders if it’s his heart and it doesn't even seem like a cliche.

 

“Niall’s alive,” Paul says, after a beat, and Zayn makes a choking sound. It’s relief at the same time as it’s hot, awful grief that the statement  _Niall’s alive_  isn’t  _Niall and Louis are alive_. “They took him to hospital in critical condition. They don’t know anything yet, it’ll be touch and go all night.”

 

“And Lou?” Harry asks quietly, because he has to know, and Liam drags Harry onto his lap and doesn’t let him see the way Paul’s face absolutely shatters.

 

\--

 

Paul doesn’t let them go to the hospital that night, insisting that they sleep instead. The media are circling like hawks, and the three of them have a long, exhausting few months ahead while everyone asks invasive questions and management figures out what to do with One Direction now that they’re only three.

 

“Because it’s touch and go,” Paul repeats, more than once. He can’t seem to help himself from wanting to brace them for the worst. “I know you want to count on Niall, but the accident was  _bad_.”

 

They all count on Niall anyway.

 

They curl into one another and stay that way all throughout that night and the following day. Harry reassures his mother that he’s fine, via text, but then he turns off his phone because he can’t handle the well-meaning but  _awful_ sympathy messages that keep coming through, and because his thumb keeps hovering over the number one on speed dial, which, if dialed, will connect him to Louis’ phone.

 

He knows no one will answer. But there’s a terrifying, brutal  _hope_  in the pit of his stomach that maybe this is some kind of mistake, and Louis will come on the line after the third or fourth ring, mouth full of something or other, with a cheerful, “Haz!”

 

Paul comes in mid-afternoon and tells them, sounding worn out but  _relieved_ , that Niall made it through every surgery.

 

Despite knowing it was coming, indirectly, Harry has been too shell-shocked to cry over Louis. He cries when they get the news about Niall, though, and Zayn gets into a stand-off with Paul that eventually sees the three of them hustled into a van and driven to the hospital.

 

When they arrive, Niall is white-faced and  _young_  in a hospital bed with too many machines around it. His parents are there, and Harry lets Liam and Zayn do the majority of mutual comforting that always seems to be required in situations like this. Harry can only stand at the window, watching machines do Niall’s breathing for him, and wonder if stopping Louis from coming to Bradford is what crushed Niall into the kind of pulp that means he won’t walk again, or maybe do much of anything else, either.

 

\--

 

Gemma picks up the phone, even though it’s four in the morning.

 

“Harry,” she says, her voice fuzzy. And then, as it clears: “ _Harry_ , I’ve been trying to call.”

 

“I know,” he says. “I shut my phone off. Sorry.”

 

“You little shit.” She sighs. “S’all right. The accident’s all over the news. At first they just kept saying ‘members of One Direction’ without saying  _who_  and mum had a bit of a meltdown.”

 

Harry tries not to feel guilty. He doesn’t have room for that, in the tangle of loss weighing him down. “I sent her a text.”

 

“Yeah, I know.” On the other end of the line, Harry hears a rustling that he assumes is Gemma getting out of bed. “That’s the only reason she didn’t come down there right away.”

 

Harry sits down on the edge of the curb outside of the hospital and lets his head drop onto his knees. There are paparazzi down by the edge of the parking lot, behind the hastily-established barricade that the hospital and local law enforcement were forced to set up when it became clear that they were going to be at the centre of international news headlines. He distantly notes one or two flashbulbs going off, but they’re far away and the angle is bad, and anyway, they can have all the grainy photographs of him talking on the phone that they want to because Harry’s just beyond caring.

 

“I’m so, so sorry about Lou, Harry,” Gemma says quietly, and the sound of her voice reaches right into his heart and holds it fast. “It’s not fair at all.”

 

Harry makes a noise that’s a little bit grief and a little bit resistance, like he doesn’t want to talk about that now. “I saw it. At the end of the tour.”

 

There’s a beat of silence, because Gemma knows how hard that is on him, how it’s so much worse than having something like this happen out of the blue. “Shit. Did you tell him it was coming?”

 

“No,” Harry says into the denim of his trousers. “He wouldn’t’ve wanted to know.”

 

“Did you tell the other lads?”

 

Harry shuts his eyes. “Yeah. Zayn tried to keep him away from Bradford but the accident just happened anyway, somewhere else. And Niall was never meant to be in it.”

 

Gemma expels a breath in realization. “Oh, Harry. You’re feeling guilty about this, aren’t you?”

 

“I shouldn’t have let Zayn try to stop it,” Harry says miserably, but Gemma overrides him.

 

“We all would’ve done the exact same,” she tells him. “It’s  _Louis_. I would’ve tied him to a chair in the kitchen and dared the universe to come and get him.”

 

Harry feels an almost-painful tug of affection for his sister, even though he knows it wouldn’t have worked. “It would’ve found a way. It always does.”

 

“Yeah.” Gemma sounds tired, and not just because it’s the middle of the night. “And if anyone was meant to really  _live_ , it’s Lou. Wasn’t the type to play it safe and boring, even if it would’ve delayed the inevitable for a little while longer.”

 

“I hate this,” Harry says then, and he’s been holding that in since the beginning. “I hate  _knowing_  and not being able to  _do anything._  I  _hate it._ ”

 

“I know,” Gemma says quietly. “I  _know_ , Haz. Do you know how many people I see who have gone and don’t even realize it? It’s not like the Sixth Sense, I don’t get to solve murder mysteries. People are just shades when they’ve passed on, just imprints of themselves, and if they talk to me at all it’s because they think I’m someone they’ve lost.”

 

Sometimes Harry forgets that Gemma can see the dead.

 

“Gem,” he says suddenly, seized by something awful and wild that makes him raise his head from his knees, back suddenly ramrod-straight. His throat feels raw. “Gem, have you seen  _Louis_?”

 

There’s a pause, and then Gemma says, very gently, “Harry, don’t you think I would’ve told you if I’d seen Louis?”

 

And just like that, all of the energy drains out of him. “Yeah.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Gemma says again, and she means it.

 

Harry buries his face in his knees again. “I know.”

 

\--

 

Niall pops a wheelie that makes the twins whoop and cheer and their two older sisters gasp and reach out in alarm, respectively.

 

“That’s dangerous,” Liam informs him mildly, like he already knows his words will fall on deaf ears.

 

“No, it’s  _cool_ ,” one of the twins insists.

 

“Yeah, Liam. It’s  _cool_ ,” Niall says, making a deft 360-spin in his wheelchair and grinning.

 

“All right, overruled,” Liam says with a sigh. “It’s cool. Although you’d better not whinge when you fall over and crack your head open.”

 

“He will, though,” Zayn says. “You’ve seen how bad he is with a cold. Imagine him with a concussion.”

 

“My skull’s brilliantly thick,” Niall says, knocking on it to demonstrate. “See? Someone else knock on it and tell Liam and Zayn.”

 

The twins obligingly begin battering him about the head with their tiny hands. Niall laughs.

 

“You’re ridiculous,” Liam informs him, but when he sounds so helplessly fond, it’s hard for Niall to take him seriously.

 

Zayn glances back toward the house, where Harry is deep in conversation with Louis’ mum. “I think this visit was a bit overdue,” he says, quietly enough that only Liam can hear.

 

“Yeah.” Liam knows that he’s right, but in the first few months after the accident, Niall was trapped in a hospital bed and the rest of One Direction had the exhausting task of fielding endless questions about their indefinite hiatus.  _Yes,_ Louis’ death has been a dark period for the band.  _No,_  they’re not saying that they’ve split up for good.  _Yes_ , we’d all like to be left bloody well alone now.

 

That last one is Zayn, who says more than a few choice words to the reporter who makes him snap. The woman isn’t anything special; Zayn just reaches his breaking point and she nudges him over the edge. Harry and Liam have to drag him away so that he can collapse in hysterics once they’re hidden away from prying eyes.

 

Liam rocks Zayn through it, kissing his face and saying a million meaningless things that eventually make Zayn quiet. Harry is called away at once to run damage control, and he lets management dictate what he says to the press for that moment because if he spends too long watching Zayn lose it, he might lose it, too. And there’s no one left to hold and kiss and whisper to Harry until he stops (although he knows that Liam and Zayn would do their level best).

 

The visit to Louis’ family is something that they all plan to do together once Niall is out of the hospital, although they of course encounter one another at the funeral and barely a day goes by that Harry isn’t on the phone with Jay. Still, it’s kind of monumental, because Niall wasn’t able to attend the funeral and all together like this, Louis’ sisters and his mum and his  _boys_ , they’re what’s left of Louis, the people whose lives he imprinted on the most, the ones who carry bits and pieces of him around in this world. He deserves to be celebrated, so that’s what they do.

 

It’s later on in the evening, when they’re all sitting in the garden with drinks in their hands, the twins long-since abed and Jay telling silly stories to Liam and Zayn about Louis’ tantrum phase, that Niall rolls up next to Harry, who’s got his head tilted back so he can see the stars.

 

“All right?” Niall asks quietly.

 

Harry rolls his head sideways, slowly, so that he can look at Niall’s silhouette in the growing dark. “I think it might be our fault.”

 

Niall watches him for a minute. Then he laughs softly. “Yeah, yours or the driver who had nine beers at lunch and reckoned he was mint to drive.”

 

Harry doesn’t think Niall understands. “I saw it, ages ago. You weren’t – in the car.”

 

“I know.” When Harry looks vaguely startled, Niall nods. “Liam told me. A couple of months ago, when I was still in hospital, he said that Zayn stopped Lou from going to Bradford. You all think you made it worse by delaying the accident so that I was in it too. That’s about the gist, isn’t it?”

 

Harry doesn’t say anything.

 

Niall sighs. “Look, Harry, I know you can see the future, and frankly I think it’s a bad deal, I’ve told you that from the start. If you ever have a vision of something happening to me, I don’t want to know about it.”

 

“Something already happened to you,” Harry says in a small voice.

 

“Yeah, but I’m here, I’m  _breathing_ , and everything else is secondary,” Niall says at once. “Yeah, I can’t play footie anymore, and it’s a bit more annoying to get around than it used to be, but I count my blessings.”

 

Harry rolls his head back to look at the stars again. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, though.”

 

“Of course you didn’t  _mean_  for it to happen.” Niall sounds genuinely surprised at the idea. “What I was getting at before – I know you can read the future, but you don’t  _write_  the future. You don’t decide what happens. All of that is in God’s hands.”

 

Harry is silent for a moment. “I’m glad you’re here.”

 

“Yeah.” Niall smiles. “I’m glad I’m here, too. Sometimes I think… I mean, I know you and me have never been as – close as you and Lou, so – ”

 

“Don’t,” Harry interrupts. “I’m glad you’re here. I mean it.”

 

“Thanks,” Niall says quietly, serious for once. That one syllable makes Harry’s heart ache, that Niall would think even a little bit that Harry – that any of them – would  _trade_  him for Louis, given the opportunity, and he reaches across to catch Niall’s hand and doesn’t let go.

 

\--

 

One Direction never come back from their indefinite hiatus, although Zayn and Liam eventually release solo albums and they do a bit of a reunion show in London about five years on. It’s packed to the rafters, and Niall raises his fists in the air and grins like anything, basking in the screams of sixty thousand people who remember the golden days.

 

Harry is hell on wheels at first. The tabloids run stories about cocaine and hook-ups with strangers, men and women alike, but Harry is pretty sure he has it under control. He drinks and dances and fucks and parties until he wakes up one morning with the sun shining outside his window and decides he’s finished with all of that. After the self-destructive impulse is out of his system, he plants a garden and does some charity work, but mostly he keeps to himself. The boys come by on Saturdays, when they’re not touring or otherwise engaged, and they make dinner and talk until Niall dozes off in his chair and Liam has to gently tug a half-full beer out of his hand before it spills.

 

Harry still has visions, but he hasn’t had one that’s mattered very much in a long time. Mostly it’s mundane things again, and he’s perfectly happy with that. He still gets weepy on Niall sometimes, very, very infrequently, when they’ve all had too much to drink and Liam and Zayn are curled in on each other, drowsy and content.

 

When that happens, Harry always crawls onto Niall’s lap and apologizes so many times that the words run together. Niall drops kisses in his hair and tells him mildly that if he doesn’t stop, Niall fully intends to run him over with his car.

 

They talk about Louis more often, as it gets less painful to do so. Harry even calls his number sometimes, just to hear the phone ring and ring before the pre-recorded voice comes on and tells him that that number has been disconnected. Harry usually hangs up before that happens, so he can pretend a little that Louis left his phone jammed down the back of the couch again; that the phone rings twenty-seven times because he’s just out of reach, but he would’ve picked up on the twenty-eighth. It’s a rude shock to Harry when, one day, he calls the number and someone picks up.

 

It’s a woman, but her voice still startles Harry so badly that he fumbles his phone and has to run to the toilet to retch until there’s nothing left in his stomach.

 

“They’ve reassigned his number,” he says abruptly the following Saturday, when he and Liam are doing the washing up. Niall and Zayn have already progressed to the back deck, because the weather is decent for this time of year.

 

“Yeah, they – you know, after awhile, they do that,” Liam says, giving Harry a look that’s a little sad. “I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, frankly.”

 

“That’s  _Louis’ number_ ,” Harry says, like Liam isn’t grasping this.

 

“I know,” Liam replies sympathetically, wringing out the dishcloth. “It’s still in my phone, too. I made Zayn take it out of his because he used to get a bit maudlin about it.”

 

“They could retire his number,” Harry says, aware that he sounds like a petulant child, but he can’t seem to stop doing it.

 

Luckily, Liam sees right through it to the raw, aching spot underneath. “It’s just a phone number, Haz,” Liam says, very quietly. “Lou was more than a phone number. A hundred million times more.”

 

Harry doesn’t trust himself to answer that. He just nods, and when Liam gently bumps him with his hip, Harry bumps back.

 

\--

 

Harry’s turned down a lot of offers in the eight years since the accident, but he reaches a point where the bright-eyed kid who tried out for the X-Factor comes grinding through all of the ache and loss and demands that adult Harry do something productive with his life. He takes the next offer than comes in, hosting a morning radio show on Radio 1, and despite the odd hours and the pay cut, he really, really likes it. He’s always had a voice for radio, and people call in to tell him how amazing and talented he is, how glad they are that he’s back in the spotlight, and it creates a little warm space under his heart that’s been absent for a long time.

 

Harry dreams about the cancer right as he’s coming off the air on a Tuesday morning. He races through his sign-off and wobbles on the way out of the sound booth, but he makes it to the bathroom before the vision overtakes him.

 

The aftertaste of it is so awful that Harry practically swallows the tiny, sample-sized bottle of mouthwash that one of the sound engineers happened to have in her purse. The accident, when Harry first dreamed it, tasted like metal and had a dulled, confused quality to it. The cancer is, by contrast, bright and sharp, and it tastes a little bit like tobacco and a lot like  _poison._

 

He goes home and sleeps it off for the next twelve hours, and when he comes back into work the next day, that dull, heavy feeling from after Louis’ death is back. Harry smiles automatically and goes on the air anyway, but afterward, his boss comes by and gives him an awkward pat on the shoulder, asking him if he needs to take a personal day or something.

 

Harry declines, because if he doesn’t go on like normal, he’ll never get back into a routine again. He’s wasted enough time letting his visions dictate the overall atmosphere of his life.

 

He doesn’t say anything to the boys the following Saturday, or the one after that. They notice something’s off, but when Harry makes it clear he doesn’t want to talk about it, they all leave it alone. Each of them has asked, in his own way, not to be told if something bad is going to happen, so Harry respects that.

 

The vision takes so long to come true that Harry says, after a few weeks, “How long since you lads have been to the doctor?”

 

Niall shrugs. “I go a few times a year. Mostly because of the accident, yeah?”

 

Liam and Zayn exchange glances. “I haven’t been in ages,” Zayn says. “Why?”

 

“Just wondering,” Harry replies with a shrug that’s so casual, it’s  _painful_  to execute. “My mum’s always going on about regular check-ups. I got mine last week.”

 

They’re smart boys. They both book an appointment the next day.

 

Harry’s just home from work a few days later, letting himself in through the front gate, when he spots Zayn standing, ramrod-straight, at the top of the steps. As Harry approaches, he doesn’t miss the way Zayn’s fingers flex, like he’s dying for a smoke but something’s stopping him.

 

Nothing prepares Harry for the way Zayn catches a fistful of the collar of Harry’s shirt and slams him into the front door.

 

“I’m sorry,” Harry says at once, and not for his own safety, but because there’s  _nothing_  recognizable in Zayn’s eyes except for pain and Harry  _hates_  it, hates that this keeps happening to them.

 

“I told you not to tell me if anything was going to happen to  _me_ ,” Zayn hisses, between clenched teeth. “I didn’t mean for you to keep it from me if something was going to happen to  _Liam._ ”

 

“It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d said anything earlier,” Harry tells him, helpless and unhappy. “Everything I see always comes true. I didn’t want what happened with Niall to happen again, for anyone else to get caught up in the backlash when we try to change things that aren’t meant to be changed.”

 

Zayn’s fingers tighten their grip, and it’s all the warning Harry has before Zayn slams him again. Harry’s bigger than him, and if he wanted to, he could force Zayn to back off, but he won’t.

 

“What’s going to happen?” Zayn demands, and he’s less furious than  _afraid_ , Harry realizes.

 

“I can’t – Zayn, you can’t ask me that, you don’t – ” Harry catches Zayn’s wrists, and Zayn’s grip on his t-shirt relaxes at once as though Zayn has only just realized what he’s doing.

 

“Oh god, Harry.” Zayn takes a step back, jerking his hands away like Harry burned him. “I’m – I didn’t mean – ”

 

“Don’t,” Harry says. “Slam me a few more times if it helps with all of this. I honestly don’t mind.”

 

Zayn just looks at him for a long moment, like he’s wrung-out and breathless and doesn’t know what to do with himself. “You know I can’t,” he says at last, stricken. “I can’t do this, not any of it. Not without him.”

 

“Zayn,” Harry murmurs, but Zayn is shaking his head, like Harry is about to argue with him.

 

“I  _can’t_ ,” he says. “He’s not even thirty, Harry, he’s not even – god.”

 

“Where is he?” Harry asks quietly, because if they both just got this news, then Liam is somewhere by himself, and he’s good at handling things, but nobody’s  _that_  good.

 

“He’s at home,” Zayn answers, dragging his hands through his hair restlessly. “I can’t go back there.”

 

“He needs you,” Harry says, and he doesn’t move from where Zayn’s set him up against the door because with the way Zayn is all over the place, Harry thinks one of them needs to be still.

 

“ _No_ , he – ” Zayn makes a choked noise that’s almost a sob. “I need  _him_.”

 

“Yeah, you do,” Harry replies gently. “Because you’re afraid. He’s afraid, too, probably.”

 

“I can’t go back,” Zayn repeats, and Harry doesn’t have the best idea of what’s going on in Zayn’s mind right now, but he catches him by the sleeve of his jacket and guides him over to the decorative deck chair that Harry never uses.

 

“I’ll send Niall over so that he’s not alone,” Harry says, and Zayn just nods along, staring out at the empty street with tears gathered along his eyelashes.

 

\--

 

Liam never tells Harry how bad it is, but the treatment starts almost right away. He starts to doze off often in the middle of things, and his shirts stop fitting tightly across his shoulders. He doesn’t breathe easily anymore, and the oxygen mask he ends up with sometimes seems to swallow his face. More than any of the physical side effects, though, what tips Harry off every time and doesn’t let him forget that Liam is sick is the way Zayn takes care of him.

 

Zayn has always been good to Liam, but now there’s that little bit extra. Zayn acquires things Liam needs practically before Liam even says anything. He hovers, protective hands on Liam’s shoulders, whenever they’re out in public together. When it gets bad enough that Liam uses a wheelchair a lot of the time, Zayn takes him  _everywhere_. He pushes him to the cinema, to the shops, to the library, and even to church, when Liam requests it once. They don’t go back again, but Harry catches Zayn more than once with his head tipped down over a sleeping Liam, lips moving as he shapes pleas Harry doesn’t try to hear. Harry even sees him  _carry_  Liam once, which probably wouldn’t have been possible before Liam got so small and tired and worn away.

 

The treatment knocks Liam flat, but eventually it starts to really work and Harry becomes cautiously optimistic that the scene he saw in his vision is behind them and that this is it. Liam and Niall finally hold their first official wheelchair race without Zayn’s help, and though Liam is so winded by the end that he has to go inside and lie down, he still rags on Niall about his victory every chance he gets. Niall just grins at him and shakes his head.

 

“Did I let Liam win?” Niall asks Harry afterward. “Obviously. Look at how adorable his face gets. Totally worth it.”

 

“Yeah?” Harry smirks.

 

“Don’t you make that face at me, Styles,” Niall says, trying to look indignant and failing. “I could’ve  _schooled_  him if I’d wanted to.”

 

“He  _thrashed_  you,” Harry teases, and easily evades Niall’s attempt to swat him in the head.

 

By the time he nears the end of his treatment, the prognosis has gone from cautiously looking up to steadily improving, and Liam starts to very kindly tell Zayn off for being a ‘helicopter dad’. Zayn lets him do it and then proceeds to bend down and tie Liam’s shoelaces for him anyway, which Niall makes loud gagging noises about. Both Liam and Zayn ignore him.

 

Harry isn’t surprised when Zayn comes up with a ring one day toward the end of October. He shows it to Harry and Niall and doesn’t let either of them touch it, which of course Harry insists on turning into a game wherein Niall blockades Zayn into the room with his wheelchair and Harry chases him over and around furniture while Zayn clutches the box to his chest and shouts at him.

 

The two of them get married in the spring, and Liam’s hair has grown into the mass of curls he used to sport in the early days of One Direction. Zayn won’t let him cut it because he says the old buzz cut, the act of rebellion that the whole world could see when management was breathing down their necks, reminds him too much of the cancer.

 

Liam is okay with that. There are tuxedos and champagne and slow dances that go something like  _darling don’t be afraid I have loved you for a thousand years_  while Liam beams at Zayn and Zayn doesn’t seem to even remember that anyone else exists. Harry, of course, drags his palms under his eyes to get rid of the wetness and hauls Liam away to grind on him totally inappropriately while Niall grabs Zayn’s hands and the two of them engage in some kind of ridiculously undignified wheelchair dance that somehow ends with Zayn sitting in Niall’s lap and laughing hysterically while the latter races around the edge of the dance floor.

 

The four of them end up collapsing together behind the wedding tent later in the evening, sprawled on the lawn while the sound of  _Whiter Shade of Pale_  drifts across the grass.

 

“Hey,” Niall says from where Harry and Zayn have settled him on the grass. He pushes himself up onto his elbows and, with difficulty, retrieves a flask from inside his jacket.

 

“You absolutely  _would_ ,” Liam says, when he sees it.

 

“I would what?” Niall asks innocently.

 

Zayn rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Bring a flask to an open-bar wedding.”

 

Niall flashes a grin and unscrews the cap. “I wanted to do something,” he says. “I know we’ve been mentioning Lou in our speeches all day – ”

 

“And you and Harry rigged the sound system to play  _Bad Touch_  for our first dance and it wouldn’t shut off until the song had played all the way through,” Liam says dryly.

 

Niall laughs.  _Because someone who couldn’t be here tonight left explicit instructions about this,_  Harry had announced to the room via the DJ’s microphone, and Zayn and Liam couldn’t even be seriously annoyed about it because yeah, Louis had definitely said once,  _I think when we all get married, Bad Touch would be the ideal band-wide wedding song. If we don’t make a pact about it right now, I’m stuffing glitter down everyone’s trousers._

 

“But I wanted us to have our own toast to him, just the four of us,” Niall continues. “Because he ought to be here.”

 

“He  _is_  here,” Harry says quietly, and they all fall silent for a moment, Zayn tucked in Liam’s lap, Harry and Niall lying close enough nearby that their heads are touching.

 

“Miss you, Lou,” Niall says, after a long moment, taking a swallow from the flask. He passes it to Zayn, who disentangles his arms from Liam long enough to take it and hold onto it for a moment.

 

“We’ve talked about having kids,” Zayn offers, to the group and to the stars and to whoever is listening on the wind. “I wanted them to be Li’s, obviously, but his cancer’s genetic so we thought – ”

 

“Best not risk it,” Liam puts in quietly. “And Zayn doesn’t want to have kids of his own if I can’t because he’s annoyingly stubborn, so we’re going to find a kid who’s already out there, who needs parents.”

 

“Yeah. We thought it’d be nice, to give something back to the universe, because we’ve gotten so much…” Zayn clears his throat, and Harry hears Liam shift and gather Zayn closer. It’s achingly sweet. “If we get to pick, we’ll call the baby Lou,” Zayn finishes, after a moment. He tips the flask back for a hit and then passes it to Liam, who raises it for a moment and then does the same.

 

When the flask comes to Harry, he doesn’t sit up, resting it on his chest for a long moment. “Dear Louis Tomlinson,” he says, dredging up a memory that’s gone soft and sweet around the edges, faded with age and familiarity. “Always in my heart. Love, Harry Styles.”

 

The whisky is bitter on his tongue, but when it pools like fire around in his heart, Harry smiles, because being in love with Louis felt exactly like that.

 

When the flask comes back to Niall, he turns it over and tips some of the amber liquor out onto the grass. “And one for Lou,” he says. “Cheers, mate.”

 

They stay and reminisce for awhile, occasionally lapsing into long, comfortable silences. Eventually, Zayn’s mum comes looking the newlyweds because some of Zayn’s cousins are leaving and want to say goodbye, and ultimately Harry tucks Niall back into his wheelchair and they drift back to the party, too.

 

At the very end of the night, when Liam and Zayn have already disappeared off to the honeymoon suite, Harry and Niall are the last ones on the dance floor. The song is  _Where is my Mind?_  and Harry’s waving his arms above his head with his eyes closed, looking absurd and lovely and  _fragile_  and peaceful. Niall’s got his eyes closed too, just kind of swaying to the music, and honestly, it should look ridiculous, the two of them facing each other, Niall sitting and Harry moving his arms like some kind of preposterous tree, but the few guests who remain, finishing off drinks or collecting their jackets, just smile at them and don’t say a word.

 

Liam gets his official clean bill of health three weeks after the wedding, although because of the recurring nature of his illness, he has to be very thorough about coming in for regular checkups.

 

Harry grins when he hears that. Nobody’s ever accused Liam of not being thorough.

 

The two of them are sitting in the car while Zayn, who drew the short straw, runs in to grab celebratory takeout food on the way home from the hospital. Harry leans forward from the back seat and rests his chin on Liam’s shoulder.

 

“I’m glad everyone’s happy,” Harry announces.

 

Liam twists his neck so he can look at as much of Harry’s face as possible. “Harry,” he says, very carefully. From here, Harry can watch Zayn rummaging through his wallet just inside the restaurant.

 

“Yeah?” Harry inquires.

 

“Is this it?” Liam can’t quite meet his eyes at the angle they’re at, but neither of them seem inclined to change that.

 

“Is what it?” Harry asks, like the tightening in his gut doesn’t tell him exactly what.

 

Liam sighs, very quietly. “The cancer that you saw in your vision… is this it? Do we go on and get to be happy now, for at least a little while?”

 

Harry doesn’t say anything.

 

Liam turns his head back to face the front, watching Zayn too, now, as the latter wrestles foam containers into a bag on the takeout counter just past the glass doors of the restaurant.

 

“Don’t tell him, yeah?” Liam says at last, in a tone that shouldn’t feel like a punch in the stomach but does anyway. “Let him have his happy-ever-after for a bit.”

 

There’s a beat, and then Harry turns his head and presses a kiss to Liam’s jaw. “I wouldn’t tell him. Not for a million trillion pounds.”

 

Just before Zayn gets back in the car, Liam says, “Would you do me a favour?”

 

\--

 

Liam and Zayn have been married for just over a year when Liam comes up from the basement with an armful of photo albums and promptly collapses on the kitchen floor. By the time Harry gets to the hospital, Zayn is having a quiet but intense discussion with one of the doctors, and Harry only needs to see the doctor lean away slightly, trying to address Zayn in that soothing, patient tone trademarked to medical professionals everywhere, before Harry grabs Zayn by the elbow and drags him insistently away.

 

They’re barely around the corner before Zayn has his meltdown. At least, Harry thinks bleakly, Zayn is lashing out at someone who can talk him down instead of a complete stranger. Harry doesn’t want to talk him down, though; the way Zayn is raging at Harry in that absurdly level tone, like he’s afraid to raise his voice in a cancer ward, is probably just the beginning of things Zayn needs to get off his chest.

 

By the time he’s worked his way through  _you knew and you didn’t tell me_  and  _they said we might have ten years before it came back, someone has to be held responsible for lying to me,_  and even, simply,  _why is this happening to us_ , Zayn’s knees have begun to buckle and he collapses into one of the hard, plastic waiting room chairs.

 

Harry kneels in front of him, and when Zayn tries to push him away, Harry catches his wrists and simply holds onto them. Zayn crumples forward and rests his head on Harry’s shoulder.

 

“Eighty per cent of lung cancer happens to smokers,” Zayn tells Harry’s Captain Jack Harkness t-shirt. “Liam doesn’t smoke.  _I smoke._ ”

 

“You don’t,” Harry reminds him softly. “You quit.”

 

“Yeah, but I  _did_ ,” Zayn says, and his voice breaks. “I smoked for the first twelve years we knew each other, during the first seven years we lived together. I only quit after the damage was done.”

 

Harry stills. “Zayn, you didn’t do this, mate.”

 

Zayn laughs harshly. “Well, it wasn’t  _you_  lighting up on nights in together in front of the telly or after making love and cracking a window and trusting that would be  _enough._ ”

 

“You didn’t  _know_ ,” Harry stresses. “And anyway, you smoked for years around me and Niall and we’re all right. It’s just bad luck.”

 

“He’s got a genetic predisposition to cancer,” Zayn snaps, because  _luck_  has nothing to do with it.

 

“ _Yeah_ , he does,” Harry replies, because that basically proves his point. “He would’ve gotten it somehow anyway.” Harry shakes him slightly, because Zayn cannot be thinking like this. “Nobody blames you, least of all Liam. And if you keep feeling guilty, Liam’s going to notice, and then he’ll make that ridiculous  _sad puppy_  face that I absolutely can’t handle. If you make him make that face, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

 

Zayn lifts his face from Harry’s shoulder, and he’s not smiling at all, his face grey. “You have to tell me how it ends, Harry.”

 

Harry pulls away at once, letting go of Zayn’s wrists so quickly that the latter rocks forward, nearly losing his balance.

 

“Knowing how it ends doesn’t make it easier,” Harry tells him. “Trust me.”

 

“Harry,” Zayn says quietly.

 

Harry smiles at him, but it’s tired and drained of colour. “What would change, if you knew?”

 

Something flickers in Zayn’s face as he watches him. “Nothing.”

 

“Knowing doesn’t make it easier,” Harry repeats. “Even if it’s bad news, part of you always hopes.”

 

“Does Liam know?” Zayn asks.

 

“Liam’s okay,” Harry says, instead of answering. “He just needs you to be okay, too.”

 

\--

 

There’s a binder’s worth of paper work spread over the bed, cresting into hills and valleys where the blanket over Liam’s legs bunches and drapes. The window is open, and periodically one of the papers stirs in the breeze until Zayn glares it into submission.

 

“How come any regular idiot can have a baby any time they want to, and we’ve got to do heaps of paperwork before they’ll even bother to run a background check?” Zayn complains, sitting back and scrubbing his hands over his face. He hadn’t thought he’d be this disgruntled over the adoption process, but it’s a lot more exhausting and time-consuming than he’d thought, and he’s doing most of the heavy lifting himself. Liam does his best, but he sleeps a lot, and it’s not like Zayn feels comfortable taking his time in this particular instance.

 

“Because we’re not regular idiots,” Liam offers. “We’re extra-special idiots.”

 

“I’m beginning to see that,” Zayn mutters darkly.

 

“Let’s ignore all of this nonsense for a bit,” Liam suggests. “I know we’re all set with Lou for a first name, but what about a second name?”

 

“Liam,” Zayn says at once. “Liam for a second name.”

 

“Absolutely not,” Liam says.

 

“Why not?” Zayn protests.

 

“Because it’s boring,” Liam replies. “I like… Waldo.”

 

Zayn gives him a  _look._  “I’m not raising a child named Lou  _Waldo._ ”

 

“I’m actually quite taken with the name  _Lou Waldo_ ,” Liam says, straight-faced. “I think it’s got a sense of whimsy.”

 

Zayn snorts. “Well, as long as it’s got a  _sense of whimsy_.”

 

“I’m putting it in my will,” Liam announces. “You’re to name our child Louis Waldo and never, ever change it.”

 

It’s the sort of thing Louis himself would have done, once upon a time, except he probably would have actually followed through.

 

“I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you can put in a will,” Zayn says dryly. “And anyway, if you try to play the cancer card I’ll hit you with a brick.”

 

Liam smiles in the way that makes his eyes crinkle up. “Let’s compromise,” he suggests. “Lee if we get a boy, Leah if it’s a girl.”

 

Zayn nods thoughtfully, pretending it’s a hardship. “I suppose I can live with that.”

 

Liam shifts slightly under the blankets, causing some of the papers to rustle around. He reaches for Zayn’s hand, and Zayn gives him a tired but affectionate smile and lets him take it.

 

\--

 

Harry wonders, with a creep-crawl of something vaguely like guilt up the back of his neck, whether it’s unlucky that Louisa Leah Malik-Payne is born into this world as her father’s fighting to stay.

 

The adoption process goes faster than usual for them, because they’re still recognizable names and they both have money. A struggling single mom in her late twenties gets in touch with them through the adoption agency early in her pregnancy, and by the time the little girl is born, the appropriate paperwork has all been filed and approved. There are three hundred pictures of Liam holding the baby, washed-out white against the sterile hospital walls but smiling so hard it’s like his face might crack in half, before the first week is out.

 

Niall’s got a new camera and he can’t resist, so there’s also a mountain of photos featuring Zayn and Liam with their heads together over the baby, Harry making awful faces at his new goddaughter, and even the odd selfie wherein Niall puts his sunglasses on the baby’s face and snaps pictures of the two of them with the camera at arm’s length like they’re sorority girls or something.

 

 Liam’s family visits – they come round fairly often anyway – and Zayn’s family arrives a few days after that, so Zayn gets enough photos to fill all of the empty photo albums Liam dropped on the kitchen floor that day that seems like a long time ago now. When they’re full to the bursting, he buys more and fills those too.

 

Liam goes through a few more weeks of chemotherapy and radiation after Louisa arrives, but there's something different about the way that it drags at him this time around and they can all see it. Eventually, the doctor is forthright with them: It’s not even making a dent, and it’s time to start talking about quality of life. Zayn asks Niall to take Louisa for the night and then curls up in Liam’s lap and lets his husband stroke his hair and say quiet, lovely, reassuring things to him while he cries.

 

Zayn knows that he should be the one being strong. He’ll step up when he has to, but right now he needs time.

 

Once it’s been made clear that the treatment has stopped working, Liam goes home and throws himself into family life with Zayn and their daughter. It’s hard, and neither of them knows what they’re doing, really, but without the chemo knocking him on his ass, Liam has a sudden burst of energy that gets them through the first month or two and they gradually begin to fumble their way through.

 

The energy is kind of deceiving, because Liam looks much less like he’s dying now than he ever did in the hospital. Zayn watches him gently bounce Louisa as he wanders around the house, trying to get her to sleep with snatches of songs that don’t make any sense together. He sings  _What Makes You Beautiful_  as often as he sings  _Fly Me to the Moon_  or  _You Are My Sunshine_ , and he forgets the lyrics to all of them with equal ease and makes them up as he goes along. It makes Zayn’s heart ache with how beautiful it is, and for a while he gets to pretend that they aren’t living on borrowed time at all.

 

Liam makes it to Louisa’s fourth month at home with them before the cancer hits him like a freight train. He’s been coughing more and losing weight steadily, but it seems like all of a sudden he’s spending a lot of time curled up on his side on the sofa, unable to make even short trips out to the car and back (upstairs is another planet).

 

The transition to palliative care happens in a blur; Zayn doesn’t want Liam to go but Liam insists. He thinks that the house ought to be a place with positive memories, and anyway, he doesn’t think it’s particularly good for Louisa to be around sickness all the time. Besides, she deserves to have Zayn’s undivided attention, which isn’t happening when Liam’s around despite Zayn’s best intentions.

 

After that, it all happens very fast. Liam waits until he’s alone in the room with Harry one day before he cries, and it’s not at all like Zayn breaks down; there are just suddenly a lot of tears spilling over where there weren’t before, and he doesn’t even make a sound.

 

Harry’s seen this before. This specific scene is what came to him in the vision he had about all of this to begin with, and it’s odd now that he’s part of a future he once saw. It doesn’t happen often. Eerily, he carries out the same actions he did in the vision, and it’s not even an effort at  _all._  He ends up sitting on the edge of the bed and gathering Liam in a hug, and then he cries too and it’s weirdly cathartic.

 

They both seem to feel better afterward, at any rate. Liam doesn’t really do breakdowns, even in the face of all of this; he is himself to the very last.

 

“I’ll miss you, you idiot,” Harry says, rubbing the backs of his hands along under his eyes.

 

Liam smiles at Harry a little. “See you on that great, big concert stage in the sky?”

 

Harry chokes out a laugh. “With the biggest crowd ever, waiting, just on the other side of a  _hundred million_  stage lights. Waiting to go  _wild._ ”

 

Liam deepens his voice, like a sports announcer: “One D _iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii_ rection!” He exhales into his hands, mimicking the sound of a crowd roaring.

 

“I’ll trust you to get the crowd warmed up for us, then.” Harry smiles fondly and reaches out for a fist-bump. “And say hi to Lou. Tell him not to eat all the tacos before I get there.”

 

Liam raises an eyebrow. “Tacos?”

 

Harry waves a hand. “He’ll get it.”

 

There’s a comfortable silence that’s as much a goodbye as anything else.

 

“Take care of my family, yeah?” Liam asks, after a minute.

 

Harry crosses his heart. “Always.”

 

Liam dies on the twenty-fifth of October.

 

\--

 

Niall and Harry sleep at Zayn’s a lot, in the beginning. Zayn’s family is around, too, and Liam’s, so for the first month or so, it’s easy to make sure that he’s never alone. Zayn throws himself into taking care of Louisa like he thinks that if he looks up for even a second, he’ll shatter. When it’s Harry’s turn to stay over, he always crawls in next to Zayn without asking. Sometimes Zayn sleeps with his back to him, but sometimes he holds on like Harry is  _the only thing_  that will anchor him and shudders silently through wracking sobs while Harry drops kisses in his hair and rubs circles into his back.

 

Niall is careful to give Zayn his space, because Niall knows that  _he_  would feel suffocated by all of these people constantly coming and going, watching you like they’re just waiting for you to fall apart. Zayn smiles wanly at him once when Niall kicks everyone out of Zayn’s kitchen so that Zayn can make a sandwich, by himself, in  _peace_ , and Niall is pretty sure that Zayn appreciates his method of handling things, too.

 

Harry waits nearly four months after the funeral before he hands Louisa off to Liam’s mum and drags Zayn out of the house. It’s a beautiful day, and Harry leads the way down to the park two streets over. Zayn doesn’t fight him on it, but he walks two paces away from Harry, oddly distant.

 

When they get there, Harry tugs Zayn over to a fairly private spot near a stand of trees. They sit down in the grass, and Harry takes his iPod out of his pocket and hands it to Zayn.

 

“What?” Zayn doesn’t even bother to finish framing the question properly.

 

Harry rolls his eyes. “Put the headphones on, it makes it easier to hear things.”

 

Zayn gives Harry a look like he’s not sure what’s going on and he’s also not sure why he let himself be dragged to a secluded spot by a nutter, but he hesitantly puts the heavy headphones over his ears. Harry pushes play and then flops over onto his back, lacing his fingers behind his head and closing his eyes serenely.

 

“ _Hey, it’s me. Uh… obviously._ ” It’s Liam’s voice. Zayn goes immediately still.

 

“ _How are you? Okay, I hope. I know I’m – gone, at the time when you’re listening to this. I hope it’s okay. Or it will be okay. Good lord, I’m rubbish at this. Can I start again?_ ” There’s a muffled clatter in the background, and Liam says, “ _Harry says I can’t start again. Oh well. This is it, then. You’d probably expect as much from me anyway._ ”

 

This time, Zayn can actually make out the muted sounds of Harry saying something in the background. “ _Harry says you definitely would. So that’s that, then. Anyway, I’ve made you a CD. I’ve written some songs over the years, some of them just in the past little while because it seemed a bit – urgent, I guess, to make sense of things and the way I feel. There are fifteen songs, which is just a coincidence, honestly, but Harry’s more romantic than I am and he said that there are fifteen songs because there’s one for every year I’ve been in love with you._ ”

 

Zayn is paralyzed, hunched over the iPod. A raw ache in the back of his throat makes his breath come out funny.

 

“ _Anyway, since this is clearly the worst album dedication ever, I’ll just get right into the songs.”_  Liam clears his throat. _“Just wanted to say that, uh, I wouldn’t change a thing. If I could go back, I mean. This life was the best life that could’ve happened, Zee. And, uh, also – tell Lou that the last song is for her._ ”

 

There’s a brief silence, and then the first song starts. It’s Niall on guitar; Zayn recognizes that funny little way he dips into a chord sometimes, like he’s forgotten it’s coming and might’ve almost skipped right to the next one. When Liam starts to sing, Zayn gently lowers himself onto the grass next to Harry and tips his face toward the sun.

 

\--

 

Louisa refers to Niall as ‘ _Na’_  and prefers sitting on him, while he wheels them around, to virtually any stationary lap or alternative mode of transportation. She’s doing it now, tugging on his hair and shouting garbled, non-word instructions as he obligingly rolls them toward any target she points out and pops the occasional wheelie that makes her shriek in his ear. Niall’s been involved in every wheelchair sport imaginable, including a foray into wheelchair stunt-jumping that made the rest of them wince, but playing chariot for Louisa is his favourite.

 

“Does Zayn  _always_  wait to pack the morning of?” Gemma asks, from where she’s sitting in the shade on the front stairs.

 

“Nah.” Harry shades his eyes and grins at her from where he’s reclining a few steps away, on the lawn. “He’s doing it to annoy you. Is it working?”

 

Gemma leans back, as though aiming her voice in the general direction of the upstairs bedroom will enable Zayn to better hear it despite several layers of wood and brick: “ _Malik! Hurry up!_ ”

 

“It’s not a road trip unless Zayn’s there to delay everything,” Niall calls from across the yard.

 

“ _Dada_ ,” Louisa adds, making grabby hands at nothing in particular.

 

“Even your daughter wants you to stop being such a slowcoach,” Gemma shouts.

 

Zayn, of course, makes no reply.

 

“Jesus, he is actually the worst,” Gemma grouses. “We told mum we’d be there by ten.”

 

“I know.” Harry pulls a face. “I got up early and everything.”

 

Gemma tosses a pebble at his head. “Only because I came to your house, dragged you out of bed, dropped you into the shower,  _turned the water on_ , and played goaltender in front of the bathroom door so that you couldn’t escape and fling yourself back into bed.”

 

“Still counts,” Harry says, looking about fifteen times more angelic than he actually is.

 

Gemma snorts.

 

“ _Dadadadadadadadada_ ,” Louisa sings out as she and Niall whiz past.

 

“Teach a kid  _one word_  and she just wants to show off,” Harry jokingly complains.

 

“She probably doesn’t even know what it means,” Gemma points out, watching Niall do a doughnut that has Louisa clinging to his neck and shrieking like it’s the best thing ever.

 

“Yeah, she pretty much says it whenever,” Harry agrees. “I’m dada. You’re dada. That tree over there is dada.”

 

“Hang on.” Gemma is still watching Niall and Louisa, and she half-rises from the steps.

 

“What?” Harry asks, glancing over his shoulder as well.

 

“Nothing.” Gemma sits down again, and she’s smiling. “Sometimes I forget that really little kids can do what I can do.”

 

Harry watches her, uncomprehending. “Scream and hang off of Niall?”

 

“When do I  _scream_  and  _hang off of Niall_?” Gemma asks with a good-natured roll of her eyes. “Idiot. I meant the other thing. The – gift. From Gran.”

 

Harry cocks his head. “You can  _see the dead_ , Gem, I don’t – ”

 

And then it dawns on him what she means.

 

“Little kids can – ” He begins, unable to finish.

 

“Until they’re two or three,” Gemma affirms.

 

Harry turns fully around to watch Niall criss-cross the driveway, Louisa giggling madly.

 

Gemma stretches out and nudges him with her foot. “Why do you think she keeps saying  _dada_?”

 

Harry whips around to stare at her, and Gemma grins, but before Harry can ask any of the questions that are cropping up in the part of his brain that isn’t struck speechless, Zayn’s banging his way out of the house, rolling suitcase in tow.

 

“What are you all standing around for?” Zayn demands, unsuccessfully trying to bury a smirk. He hasn't smiled much in the past year, but sometimes there are tiny, bright splashes of the old Zayn. “Always making me  _wait_  for you.”

 

Gemma laughs and hops to her feet to help him with his bag.

 

Behind her, Harry turns back around to watch Louisa and Niall and wonders how it is that he's had so many visions, but none of them ever told him that things have a way of turning out okay.

 

It's an odd feeling, not worrying about the future.


End file.
